Popular passages

Page 304 - So saying, on he led his radiant files, Dazzling the moon; these to the bower direct In search of whom they sought : him there they found Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve, Assaying by his devilish art to reach The organs of her fancy, and with them forge Illusions as he list, phantasms and dreams...

Page 112 - And, groping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers ; The flush of life may well be seen Thrilling back over hills and valleys ; The cowslip startles in meadows green, The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, And there 's never a leaf nor a blade too mean To be some happy creature's palace...

Page 387 - Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun, Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain.

Page 175 - What next? A tuft of evening primroses, O'er which the mind may hover till it dozes; O'er which it well might take a pleasant sleep, But that 'tis ever startled by the leap Of buds into ripe flowers...

Page 141 - As he proceeded he found the mustard thicker and thicker. The wild mustard in Southern California is like that spoken of in the New Testament, in the branches of which the birds of the air may rest. Coming up out of the earth, so slender a stem that dozens can find starting-point in an inch, it darts up, a slender straight shoot, five, ten, twenty feet, with hundreds of fine feathery branches locking and interlocking with all the other hundreds around it, till it is an inextricable network like lace....

Page vi - Yet fount of hope. Posthumous glories! angel-like collection ! Upraised from seed or bulb interred in earth, Ye are to me a type of resurrection, And second birth. Were I, O God, in churchless lands remaining, Far from all voice of teachers or divines. My soul would find in flowers of thy ordaining. Priests, sermons, shrines!

Page 114 - Thy satin vesture richer is than looms Of Orient weave for raiment of her kings! Not dyes of olden Tyre, not precious things Regathered from the long-forgotten tombs Of buried empires, not the iris plumes That wave upon the tropics' myriad wings, Not all proud Sheba's queenly offerings Could match the golden marvel of thy blooms.

Page xlvi - The Great Central Plain of California, during the months of March, April, and May, was one smooth, continuous bed of honey-bloom, so marvelously rich that, in walking from one end of it to the other, a distance of more than 400 miles, your foot would press about a hundred flowers at every step.

Page 368 - Yet these sweet sounds of the early season, And these fair sights of its sunny days, Are only sweet when we fondly listen, And only fair when we fondly gaze. There is no glory in star or blossom Till looked upon by a loving eye ; There is no fragrance in April breezes Till breathed with joy as they wander by.